5 NRDs sued over groundwater

HOLDREGE — Attorneys for Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District now have nine cases pending related to groundwater management by Platte Basin natural resources districts.

Legal counsel Mike Klein of Holdrege said the number reflects a flaw in Nebraska's water management system.

“Groundwater and surface water are a single resource and should be treated as a single resource,” he told the Kearney Hub. “That's my opinion, not the district's.”

At this week's CNPPID board meeting, he said the initial Central challenge was against the groundwater allocation set for the Pumpkin Creek watershed by the Scottsbluff-based North Platte NRD. The allocation was dropped from 16 inches to 14 inches per acre, but Central officials said that wasn't enough to restore Pumpkin Creek streamflows that contribute to Lake McConaughy inflows from the North Platte River.

A Scotts Bluff County District Court judge rejected Central's petition for a judicial review and said the district had no standing to challenge the allocation.

Klein said legal briefs in CNPPID's appeal of that ruling were filed Friday with the Nebraska Court of Appeals.

Central also has challenged the integrated water management plan written by the NPNRD and the Nebraska Department of Water Resources.

Klein said a petition filed in Scotts Bluff County District Court says the NPNRD failed to grant Central a “contested case hearing” on the plan.

The legal paperwork is piled even higher with Central's challenge of the integrated water management plan for the overappropriated part of the Platte Basin west of Elm Creek. District officials argue that the plan does nothing to restore depleted river flows upstream of Lake McConaughy.

Klein said the five NRDs involved — North Platte, South Platte, Twin Platte, Tri-Basin and Central Platte — all denied Central requests for contested case hearings. So separate petitions were filed in district courts in Scotts Bluff, Cheyenne, Lincoln, Phelps and Hall counties.

He said NRD officials in some of those counties now are filing motions to dismiss the CNPPID petitions. Meanwhile, DNR officials haven't acted on Central's request for a hearing on the basinwide plan.

“The basinwide integrated water management plan simply is not in compliance with the law,” Klein said. The law is supposed to provide a method to resolve surface water and groundwater conflicts.

He said it's a time-consuming, complicated process to challenge the basin plan because individual NRDs are involved. If the state were given oversight, Klein said, “you'd have a decision maker as opposed to a committee of decision makers.”